


Electric Things Live Too

by cognomen



Series: The Concept of Mine [1]
Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: AU, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-02
Updated: 2012-07-02
Packaged: 2017-11-09 00:33:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/449261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cognomen/pseuds/cognomen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He doesn't know what he thinks the machine is. But, he knows when he stands on the street and looks up at the encompassing but uncomprehending eye of the camera that because of what Finch has only barely hinted; that the machine, whatever ghost it holds, knows that he is there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Electric Things Live Too

Lights flash expectantly at John and he has little idea what to make of it. He has never felt so oppressed by belief. Finch would know what to do, but John feels as if he's hit a wall without the backup that he's slowly become accustomed to. His mind blanks at the notion of trying to deal with the machine. It's an anomaly in himself that John can't explain, and that itself gives him pause when by all rights he should be moving. He's wasting seconds against a dwindling time frame because he's come to believe, perhaps, that Finch and the machine are inseparable and because of that trying to force his way into the middle feels - impossible. Sacreligious. The computers themselves lock him out with the warnings that failed passwords will erase everything, remove even that tenuous link he has in a vacant chair, blank screens. He powers them down and leaves them be.

He doesn't know what he thinks the machine is. But, he knows when he stands on the street and looks up at the encompassing but uncomprehending eye of the camera that because of what Finch has only barely hinted; that the machine, whatever ghost it holds, knows that he is there. Recognizes John from the sea of faces as an individual. He attributes some humanity or divinity to the machine. When he looks up with only a red light to answer him and asks for help, it doesn't feel so much like a prayer as it probably should, seeing how utterly he's placing his faith in something unknown, unseen, and intangible.

Something inside him _understands_ , that it will answer, and therefor it's not a prayer, but a desperate and quiet request for help.

He doesn't know _what_ the answer will be, just that there will be one. He's no good at waiting in one place without the orders to do so, so he waits in motion, moves back to the docks to see if he can't find any other hints. Briefly, he considers the desperate notion of going back to Elias, of getting word to him in jail through Carter or Fusco, but he doesn't dare risk the contact. Maybe Finch's eyes are now someone else's eyes as well. Not the machine, he won't give the machine up so quickly, but not all of his access is tied to it and Finch is human. Humans can be swayed to extremes through pain and promises.

John returns to the docks - carefully. Though the body is gone, it leaves a point of focus. A sharpness of attention.He finds nothing; police tape, police - unfamiliar faces. He pulls a baseball cap lower over his eyes and studies the same tracks, the same depressions on the dirty concrete. Chalk outlines are a television myth, but he remembers where and how the body lay, a woman only distantly familiar.

This isn't the first time he wishes he was a dog in more than a metaphorical sense, so that he could follow the trail past where it disappears on the highway exit, but it's possibly the most acute way the desire has manifested.

His phone chirps. It doesn't ring or shake, doesn't indicate any standard form of message as he's used to receiving. The noise is sharply electronic, as if it came from the board or circuitry itself, rather than through the speaker.

He moves out of the light, into a byway between two buildings. An alley where fire escapes descend. The screen tells him he has a voice-mail. Unusual, no rings had indicated a call, and when he checks incoming calls the history's bare and clean. No numbers. Finch?  
He rushes to check it, in case that spirit disappeared as quickly. No voice-mail options announce themselves, no automated voice tells him when it was received or from who, or to press three to reset his greeting. 

The phone clicks in his hand, three times in succession, and then unleashes a torrent of machine noises against his ear. Harsh static intersperses with inorganic twangs, the sounds of old hard line connections.

He loses himself.

John's eyes unfocus and he becomes unaware of time, sound, light, _being_. All things fade from his consciousness, including his own presence in the world. He only realizes he should struggle against it when some faint spark of himself rebels, but by then it's too late.

John is closed away in a box, and he loses light and sound, all of it so suddenly that he doubts his existence - that he _ever_ existed - for a moment, before he forgets how to doubt at all.  
-

Reese terminates the connection on his phone and discards it in the street, in motion as it falls. The time that passes after, he is unaware of.

-

"How did you find me John?"

Finch's voice penetrates the silence and seems to slice a rent in the hole he's fallen into, the quantum box in which so many cats had met unknown fates. It cuts, and his eyes process light in the world that Finch's voice has birthed him into, and John winces, flinches back from the rush of -

_lights, fluorescent, overhead, hands, sounds, cold metal under his fingers, a voice, no fresh air, solid ground, up and down re-orienting themselves, gravity pulling, the tension and power of muscles overtaxed but mostly whole, inrush of air, breathing, stale air, old pain, new pain and-_

Harold Finch on the floor and held in handcuffs and looking worse for the wear but alive. Looking at John, _afraid_ of something.

"John?"

Reese stumbles over something as he moves further backwards. A - corpse. The graceless motion pulls sharp pain in his side and he presses a hand to the hurt - finds a wound losing blood. He feels strangely as if he has to reassert claim over his own body, wants to shake himself until all of this makes sense, but - can't.

Not here. He can't question this now.

"Mr. Reese? Are you alright?" Finch's tone has climbed an octave, and his eyes don't miss a single motion. John Reese hasn't experienced so absolute a moment of panic since he was ten years old. He had long since managed to learn how to keep his balance when everything dropped around him.

"I'm okay, " he tells Finch through clenched teeth. He moves forward to get the cuffs off of Finch, resuming what he had been doing when he'd found himself... here. "Let's get out of here. I'm okay."

"You most certainly are not," Finch argues, but he doesn't protest as John frees him and pulls him up to his feet.

John doesn't remember his way in, and therefore the way out, but Finch remembers and they move together, equally supporting each other.

John can pretend he's not being led.  
-

**Author's Note:**

> A shortform piece based on the idea that John is some form of the machine itself, some offshoot born of the sentience of the machine, a part of the contingency plan. 
> 
> Title is from Philip K. Dick's 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep'.


End file.
